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Ben Loyal

Rocky Outcrop

Folklore

Regarding the Parish of Tongue:
A semicircular chain of mountains passes nearly through the middle of the parish, the principle of which are Knoc-Rheacadan, (The Watchman's Hill), Ben Laoghal, and Ben Hope. Ben Laoghal is almost a perpendicular rock, deeply furrowed, and about half a mile high. As it declines towards the west, it is broken into several craggy points, on one of which are seen the remains of a building, called by the country people Caistal nan Druidhich, the Druid's Castle.

...

Ben Laoghal is famed, in the songs of the bards, as the scene of the death of Dermid, a young man of such extraordinary beauty, that no female heart, of that age, could resist; and withal of such prowess, that even Fingal, whose wife he had seduced, would not himself attack him, but found means to get him slain by a boar. He and the lady, or the boar, (it is not yet determined which), lie buried at the foot of the mountain.
From v3 of the Statistical Account of Scotland of the 1790s.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
2nd March 2009ce

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